July 2022 Newsletter
Contents
A Word from the League
State Championship Wrap Up
End of Year Coaches Meeting Recap
Fall ‘22 Season Introduction
MNVL Youtube Video of the Month
A Word from the League
Hey all,
A big thank you from MNVL to everyone for making the Spring ‘22 season one to remember! We’re continuing to push the limits of what high school esports can be and that was displayed at our first ever LAN in June. The amount of hard work and passion each student and coach has put into their program was clearly evident.
The results of the Spring ‘22 State Finals can be found below, as well as, our end of year coaches meeting recap and introduction of the Fall ‘22 season.
Before getting into that, we want to give our appreciation to our student interns from the Spring ‘22 season. They were hard workers, ready to learn and were great people to work with. It’s amazing seeing their growth from the start of the season to where they’re at in the end. We want to thank them one more time for all of their great work and know they’ll have a bright future ahead of them in esports.
We’ll share the application for Fall ‘22 internships towards September and they’ll be posted in the MNVL Discord server. More information regarding the upcoming season, dates, etc. will continue to be shared in the coming weeks as we get closer to the beginning of the school year.
Have a relaxing summer and we’ll see you in the Fall,
Minnesota Varsity League
State Championship Recap
MNVL held it’s first ever LAN on June 4th & 5th! All six of our titles competed live at Wisdom Gaming Studios in the Mall of America for the State Finals.
We had 184 participants representing 29 different schools at state.
It was amazing meeting the community in-person and watching the students compete and give it their all. The level of talent in MNVL this season was on full display on both days of the State Finals.
After a two week preseason, eight week regular season, and for some, divisional playoffs to make it to state; these teams/players were left standing and crowned MNVL Spring ‘22 State Champions:
Halo: St. Thomas Academy
Chess: Apple Valley AP
Valorant: Apple Valley
Minecraft: South Minneapolis
Super Smash Bros: South Minneapolis Tate
Rocket League: Spring Lake Park
A huge congratulations again to these teams! We want to thank everyone for attending and making it an amazing experience, don’t forget to check out the photo gallery if you haven’t already. It was an honor to host everyone and we’ll see you next time!
*If you missed the action, the full recap of State is posted on our YouTube
End of Year Coaches Meeting Recap:
We’ve gathered all of the feedback from the form we shared after our end of the year coaches meeting. The feedback given is greatly appreciated and is how MNVL can continue to make this a league your program wants to compete in. We’ll break it down, question by question for you below.
Q: Should MNVL run titles during both seasons?
Based on the chart, many programs felt it’s necessary to run our popular titles during the Fall and Spring seasons. How each title should be included during both seasons varied in our responses. In some fashion, we’ll host most titles for both seasons. Whether its a club league, changed game modes, or altered team sizes; we see that students just want to play and we will be giving them as many opportunities to do so as we can, while also respecting our coaches time and concerns of our programs over having multiple “State Champions” in the same year.
Q: For the Fall 2022 Season, which would you prefer in regards to divisions/sections?
The majority of schools want to be kept in the same pool, and we will respect that decision. We also see that the opinion on divisions is split, but we also have received a lot of positive feedback about them for Varsity leagues. So we will be keeping a division structure this season for Varsity games only, and basing them on school proximity, and not school size. One day our league will be big enough to have Class separations.
Q: Should we move JV to a queue system? (you queue at the game time, and you are matched with an opponent then. No ffs, but also no scouting/knowing your opponent. Also no reschedules)
We’ve noticed there’s been less of a commitment from JV in general, but some teams do show up each week to play their games. We will be moving to a queue system, so those teams ready to play will always have an opponent.
Q: When is the better date for state?
State Finals date is still TBA…
Q: Should we move SSBU/Chess to a queue system? (positive: Swiss with no ffs, negative: no rescheduling)
There will NOT be a queue system for SSBU or Chess.
Q: What programs should MNVL focus on first? (Check 3)
Where MNVL should focus:
1. Expanding the league with more schools
2. Broadcasting/streaming support and a leaguewide Twitch hub
3. Providing more “out of classroom” opportunities (field trips, etc.)
4. Collegiate recruitment structures
We’ll be improving other areas that you may have voted for that aren’t listed, but from this graph we’re able to get an understanding of what the majority would like to see prioritized.
Feedback
We greatly appreciate the feedback each coach provided in this survey. We want to continue improving and can’t do that without the honest feedback from the people involved, this is your league after all. We will always strive to be better and we have started implementing the feedback you gave for next year. We hope you will continue to help us grow and improve for our students.
Fall ‘22 Season Introduction
The MNVL crew will be working hard to make improvements to the league accordingly based on our coaches feedback. Although we’re still chipping away at those, we want to let you know of some early title additions and important dates for next year.
League of Legends is back! Riot Games surprised the academic esports community and has changed their guidelines to be less restrictive towards academic leagues, like MNVL. We couldn’t be more excited to host a full length season for Fall ‘22. We’ll release more details about the LoL league in the coming weeks.
Smite enters the ring. Smite is a third-person battle arena video game. It’s publisher, Hi-Rez Studios has committed to growing the academic esports scene and will be giving free god packs (every character unlocked) to every MNVL Smite participant and a 100,000 gem (in-game currency) prize pool for the top 8 teams to split! Smite will be added for the ‘23 Spring season.
Important Fall ‘22 Dates:
Start of Preseason: Monday, October 3rd
End of Preseason: Sunday, October 16th
Start of Regular Season: Monday, October 17th
End of Regular Season: Sunday, December 11th
State Finals: TBA
MNVL Youtube
View our new YouTube channel where we will highlight our players in weekly content!